In January, nominations opened for the 2015 Hugo Awards, which will be presented at the Worldcon in Washington, Sasquan. The ballots will close on March 10th, so if you’ve yet to nominate but are eligible to do so, best get cracking. Locus Magazine’s Recommended Reading List is always a good place to start reviewing some of the literature from last year… but we’ll focus on things connected to GRRM, one way or the other:
George is again each eligible this year for Editor- Short Fiction, thanks to Rogues, and co-editor Gardner Dozois is eligible several times over due to other collections and anthologies he’s edited in the previous year. And speaking of Rogues, all the stories therein are individually eligible in their respective categories. The Locus list linked above notes several of them, by writers such as Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, and Scott Lynch, but it’s worth noting that Martin’s novelette “The Rogue Prince” is also eligible. (And as to Best Editor - Long Form, Jane Johnson of HarperCollins Voyager and Anne Groell of Random House should be perennial nominees.)
Also eligible, of course, would be Game of Thrones in the Dramatic Presentation - Short Form category; we’d recommend nominating “The Watchers on the Wall”, the spectacular Neil Marshall-directed penultimate episode, and GRRM’s own contribution, “The Lion and the Rose”.
In the art categories, the magnificent Donato Giancola should be a cinch for Best Artist - Pro thanks to his 2015 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, and we’d also recommend The World of Ice and Fire contributors Chase Stone, Magali Villeneuve, Justin Sweet, Marc Simonetti, and José Cabrera Peña.
Speaking of the world book…. there have been some questions as to the eligiblity of The World of Ice and Fire, given the way various categories are described. It’s obviously not a novel, so would not fit there. Our recommendation for those considering it for their ballot is to put it in the Best Related Work category, and let the administrators decide if it does fall within the bounds of that category. There is some precedent for a work of this kind being eligible, however: Jeff VanderMeer’s The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases is a work that’s presented as a guide, but a guide to entirely fictional diseases, accompanied by illustrations and that was on the final ballot in the Best Related Category in 2004.
There have been many fine stories and novels besides published in the last year. For those wanting to branch out their reading, or simply racking their brains for titles to nominate in the Novel category, we submit Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb, The Goblin King by Katherine Addison, Half a King by Joe Abercrombie for your consideration—all excellent works of fantasy. And for those trying to find a Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form entry or two, you absolutely must consider Predestination, a remarkably faithful, well-executed adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s classic time travel short story, “All You Zombies”.